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Talk:Kjarkan language
Need pictogram ideas Well, I'm creating a pictogram-based language so any help you can give with concepts (Not words or letters) and pictogram descriptions will be great. And remember, you'll be showing to George Lucas and his blip blopping aliens who's better (no, not really).--Nonimportant 10:19, 12 January 2007 (UTC) ---- I'll give this some thought although it has been many years since I've attempted something like this. Brilliand developed a language/number system for Hollowstar, you may want to drop a line on his talk page. Here is an interesting site that may help: http://www.zompist.com/kit.html --Laveaux 15:16, 12 January 2007 (UTC) Hadn't time to look at this before. Nice site. But unfortunately since this language is pictogram-based, instead of letter-based, most is unusable. I added some notes on phonetics tough. --Nonimportant 17:46, 14 January 2007 (UTC) ---- Actually, I didn't create a language - just a few terms and numbering systems. However, I would be glad to help develop something akin to Hollowstar's scientific numbering system, with letters whose shapes refer to various parts of Kjarkan life (and, if their language should include concepts from other worlds, various parts of life in the universe) by a heirarchy. I think I could arrange for a language of only nouns. You don't seem to want the pictures to look like the concepts, which is helpful. I'll consider it and develop a tree of symbols and meanings. --Brilliand 22:10, 12 January 2007 (UTC) Picture system idea I have an idea for the picture system now. Each term in Kjark involves a basic shape denoting a broad category of word, minor features denoting smaller categories (a feature on a feature is a subcategory of that category) and a direction, which is the most minor factor and usually denotes which one you are talking about. Triangles also have an up-or-down orientation, which is a connotation. Major symbols Straight line: Pronoun Oval: Object Rectangle: Part of something Upward triangle: Positive connotation adjective Downward triangle: Negative connotation adjective Each noun is associated with an action. For example, in Kjarkian, "arm house" may mean that the arm hit the house or that the arm lived in the house. "Red bluehouse" would refer to changing the color of the blue house to red. Example means "Make the round blue house red." Markings I made up for the example *Triangle is an adjective, as noted above. All of the adjectives in this sentence are in the positive; the speaker isn't mad at or disgusted with anything, he just wants a change of scenery. *A half-circle cut into the long side of the triangle means a visible adjective; it denotes appearance, and nothing subjective like "ugly." Perhaps the half-cirlce cut into the the triangle for blue should be on the other side, so that left-hand half-circles can denote subjective adjectives. *The spike sticking into the half-circle marks two of the triangles as colors. *The rectangle hanging down from the other triangle's half-circle marks it as a shape. *The large triangle is slanted exactly diagonal, from the upper left-hand corner to the lower right-hand corner (if it were pointing the opposite direction, it would mean the same thing, but in a bad way). This refers to the color red. Since the adjective is large (not modifying anything), it means the color red in general. *The small color triangle is slanted exactly diagonal, from the lower left-hand corner to the upper right-hand corner, denoting the color blue. It is small and attached to the oval character, meaning that whatever the oval represents is blue. *The other small triangle is pointing straight up, denoting a circle, and also modifies the oval. *The box at the bottom of the oval denotes a building, and the slash coming off of the box ("them") categorizes it as a house. The two slashes on the side of the oval mark, to some extent, who the house belongs to: "it and it" or possibly, "him and her." *The direction of the oval may mark which house we are talking about, to distinguish it from the other round blue houses owned by two people (in a manner the reader would understand, perhaps meaning "the one slightly farther away than the middle," or possibly marking something special about the house. Come to think of it, the double slashes probably belong as adjectives rather than categories. Special meanings Red used as a noun of lesser importance (applied to an object) means to make the object red, or at the very least ensure that it is. All nouns in Kjarkian have the attribute that the word "mine" has in English: the verb and the noun are the same word, with the verb meaning what the noun is for. --Brilliand 00:40, 13 January 2007 (UTC) Comments Nice. I was thinking of making the Kjarkan language mostly contextual in nature (i.e. when you hear red house you have to understand if the speaker is asking to make the house red or if the speaker is talking about a red house), since most words would represent different concepts (like Mhu, which means any third person singular pronoun). This is a good way of doing so. The only problem being that using only triangles to mean all adjectives and ovals for all objects will be a hard task. Tough I specially like the idea of half-circles to show it has a denotative meaning. Here's an idea (It strays from your example a bit, but I believe it will work): *Every color in Kjarkan is a rectangle triangle. The overall direction it is pointing will denote the color. For example (See NOTE for an important point): means red. means green. *Other adjectives can be used as nouns and have different symbols, for example, home could be a half circle with a half triangle on top and mean "House, home, homely (Connotative), shelter and lair.". * Connotative could be used doesn't mattering where the triangle points, using half rectangles, for example Angry could be a yellow triangle with a half rectangle instead of half-circle and so on. (This way we can do connotatives for colors without changing where the triangle points). (NOTE: this way, of course, Kjarkan would not have concepts for every color. But here's the trick: They don't need it. For example: If a Skäetr found an grape they may think: "This thing looks black. It's black.". Just because other alien species can see colors like us, doesn't mean they must have names for them all, if they don't care so much about colors.) --Nonimportant 14:59, 14 January 2007 (UTC) ---- That sounds good. My dream for this was that more similar words would be closer in shape, to remain consistent with the pronouns (which are composed entirely of straight lines). So, perhaps all buildings could be the top half of a circle with additional markings denoting the building type (if the writer doesn't mean buildings in general). Unfortunately, it will be nearly impossible to write a template for this as for Hollowstar-Scinum. --Brilliand 15:15, 14 January 2007 (UTC) ---- Yeah. Pronouns are only a few and have simpler meanings so I thought of keeping them simple, specially because they're used so much. But it's way harder, if not impossible to do so with the rest of the words. I can't do anything right now (Duty calls) but I'll start the lexicon when I get back. You can write some too if you want. Only remember every pictogram has multiple meanings. --Nonimportant 15:29, 14 January 2007 (UTC)